from the to-secure-the-nation,-starting-with-the-trademarks dept

The Kansas City Royals' long-delayed return to competitive baseballing coincided with one of the most ridiculous raids ever conducted by the Department of Homeland Security. Birdies, a Kansas City lingerie shop, was "visited" by DHS agents -- working in conjunction with ICE -- who seized a number of panties emblazoned with a handcrafted take on the Royals' logo, along with the phrase "Take the Crown."

The agents performing the raid didn't seem all too enthused about their participation in this panty raid, according to the shop's owner, Peregrine Honig.

She says you could tell “they [DHS agents] felt like they were kicking a puppy.”

Honig also pointed out that many local law enforcement officers had purchased lingerie, including the supposedly-trademark infringing panties, without expressing concerns about IP violations or counterfeited goods.

The printing shop that made the panties for Birdies was also visited by DHS agents, who threatened the owner with six years in prison for "breaking copyright law" unless he consented to a warrantless search.

All of this culminated in plenty of unfavorable press coverage highlighting Homeland Security's panty raid and how much "safer" we all were thanks to its intercession on behalf of the Kansas City Royals and Major League Baseball.

On October 16, five days before the raid, an anonymous ICE officer from the Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPRC)—in the documents released, names of officers were redacted; an appeal has been filed to release the names of the officers involved—wrote an email with the subject "Op Team Player - world series update," referring to Operation Team Player, ICE's partnership with U.S. professional sports leagues to intercept counterfeit goods, including tickets and merchandise.

The unnamed officer wrote, "They [the Kansas City office] are trying to get their numbers up and will accept any leads for controlled delivery in Kansas or Missouri, even if they do not meet the criteria because the AUSA Prosecutor is eager."

For the want of increased "numbers," the DHS lowered its standards to raid a lingerie shop. That's basically all there is to it. Without the prompting of an "eager" AUSA, this may never have happened.

Within hours of the raid, the story was already spreading across the internet. A blanket statement was composed for handling inquiries from the press: the usual "Go Team IP Enforcement" jingoism that accompanies ICE's sporting event-related raids performed in close partnership with the MLB, NBA, NFL etc. But someone in the email chain knew the usual stuff wasn't going to be nearly as effective in this case.

The headlines at the bottom of the email pretty much say it all. We're going to be all over the news tomorrow for the wrong reasons. We'll obviously try to spin this as an opportunity to discuss IPR, but the panty raid jokes will make it hard.

Apparently, ICE/DHS felt this particular narrative might be beyond its control. So it tried to drag Major League Baseball down with it.

On the same thread, at 9:57 PM, someone wrote, "We need MLB to step forward and throw some support for what we do. Let us get with our MLB contact and we'll be proactive as we can re: media." Someone with the title "Executive Associate Director of Homeland Security Investigations-ICE" replied, "Great idea. Let's move on it."

As Gordon notes, perhaps the hilarious part of the email chain is the agency's severe underestimation of the internet's thirst for stories containing (a) abuse of government power, or (b) women's intimate garments -- especially any combination of (a) and (b) that's capable of composing its own headlines.

[S]omeone else on the same thread exhibited a fundamental misunderstanding of the internet's interest in panty raids by writing, "So far it appears to have just localized press. Hopefully, it won't make it out of the local news bubble."

Well, hope in one hand and hold seized panties in the other, as they say. Still, one agent appeared to believe that the government's panty raid was nothing more than a judicious use of Homeland Security assets and taxpayer dollars.

Excellent work, which speaks for itself!

Sure does. That's why press coverage was unanimously negative. ICE, DHS and an "eager" AUSA joined forces with MLB to generate additional acronyms like "WTF" and "BS." Americans were protected from unauthorized sportsball underwear -- something than can only serve to increase their respect for intellectual property rights... and the sprawling, often-thuggish bureaucracies that enforce them.

from the technology-and-stuff dept

All too often it seems as though companies take themselves entirely too seriously these days. With branding being seen as all important, too often the concept of actually behaving in a human and awesome way is lost, leading to a total lack of personality. Chevy, on the other hand, showed everyone else exactly how to handle the internet's cruel mockery.

If you're even a casual baseball fan, you probably watched some part of the game 7 World Series final the other night. If you stuck around for the presentation of the MVP trophy to pitcher Madison Bamgarner, you witnessed local Chevy guy, Rikk Wilde, attempt to give the sponsored trophy away. It did not go well.

While it is certainly understandable how a local guy with probably limited experience with speaking publicly before a national audience might fall victim to nerves in this scenario, the internet is a cruel observer and it went nuts with this video. In particular, Wilde's attempt to sell the world on the sweetness of Chevy vehicles due to the inclusion of "technology...and stuff" was instantly transformed into the meme du jour. Twitter blew up with #technologyandstuff tags, and some enterprising memesters came up with stuff like this.

All this was inevitable of course, because the internet loves to take a mistake and multiply it into a cultural thing for poops and giggles. It can't help itself. And, of course, Chevy just wouldn't be able to help from completely freaking out that what was supposed to be a carefully orchestrated sponsorship marketing opportunity had turned into a massive joke. They'd simply have to go into damage control. Except they didn't. Nope, not even a little bit.

That's right. Instead of freaking out, Chevy decided to full on embrace the whole thing. Many commentators have suggested that Chevy should be thanking Wilde for his less-than-perfect pitch of the Chevy line and it seems that the company agrees.

Chevrolet spokesman Mike Albano, in an email, confirmed that Brian Sweeney, U.S. vice president of sales and service for Chevrolet, called Wilde on Thursday to tell him the Chevy team was behind him. Chevrolet spokeswoman Cristi Vazquez said the company saw a "large spike in hits" at Chevrolet.com on Wednesday night, with visits seven times higher than normal.

No kidding. Embracing the meme, even as it mocked the company, was exactly the right thing to do. That said, it isn't always the easiest move to make. Good on Chevy for embracing the meme to its own advantage when using technology and stuff.

from the ever-vigilant-agency-on-top-of-nation's-bottoms dept

“They came in and there were two guys” Honig said. “I asked one of them what size he needed and he showed me a badge and took me outside. They told me they were from Homeland Security and we were violating copyright laws.”

Peregrine Honig runs a lingerie shop in Kansas City. Not coincidentally, her shop was raided by DHS agents just as the World Series commenced. The target? "Boy shorts" sporting an approximation of the Kansas City Royals logo as well as the cheekily-applied phrase (yes, pun completely intended) "Take the crown."

For purely illustrative purposes, here's the last known photo of the item now in the temporary possession of the Dept. of Homeland Security.

They placed the underwear in an official Homeland Security bag and had Honig sign a statement saying she wouldn’t use the logo.

Which she technically didn't. It was her own drawing, but the DHS agents pointed out that "connecting the K and C" turned it into the protected property of a major league baseball franchise.

The DHS has yet to comment on its pre-World Series panty raid. Neither has ICE, which is also usually fairly active in the days leading up to major sporting events. Neither agency has bothered to issue a press release about the hard work done in service to the multibillion-dollar entities currently attempting to "take the crown."

Honig, however, has provided plenty of color commentary, including the fact that these particular DHS agents didn't appear to be reveling in their petty IP enforcement efforts.

She says you could tell “they [DHS agents] felt like they were kicking a puppy.”

At least there's still a little shame left in overzealous trademark enforcement. This is part of what your $39 billion a year in mandatory contributions gets you: a few dozen pairs of underwear seized, most likely at a cost exceeding the retail value of the "counterfeit" goods.

from the giants-win-the-pennant dept

If you're a baseball fan, you know that the World Series is going on right now, between the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers (with the Giants looking damn good so far). On the night they won the League Championship Series to advance to the World Series, I was actually out walking my dog, listening to the game on the radio (it was a pretty nerve-wracking finish), and was actually a bit disappointed that radio announcer Jon Miller didn't pull out the obvious "The Giants win the pennant!" line, even though they had, in fact, won the pennant. As you hopefully know, that line was the famous call -- considered one of the greatest broadcasting moments in history -- back in 1951, when the (then) NY Giants' Bobby Thomson hit a homerun off the (then) Brooklyn Dodgers' Ralph Branca to secure the National League championship:

The man we all need to thank is someone named Larry Goldberg, a travel agent who had the good sense to ask his mother to tape Russ Hodges' call so he could listen to it after work. Because of Larry, we have the most joyous call in the history of sports to enjoy forever.

Yes, thanks to infringement, we have that moment in history.

And it's not the only one. Just about a month ago, the news came out that video tapes of the (previously lost) 1960 World Series had been found in the former wine cellar of Bing Crosby, who had been a part-owner of The Pirates. The final game of that series is considered one of the greatest games ever (well, less so if you're a Yankee fan...), but it had been lost... until last month. Crosby apparently couldn't bear to actually watch the game, he was so nervous (he went to Europe instead), but wanted to be able to watch it later, so he actually hired a film crew to record the official broadcast, and they were just recovered (actually, right outside of San Francisco...) last month.

So here we have two of the greatest moments in baseball that we only have the archive of the actual game recordings because of people technically infringing.

I'm really searching to see how this is a problem. First of all, those 29 other papers are all papers whose local teams are not in the World Series, meaning less interest. Second, those beat reporters are equally capable of watching the games on TV from the comfort of their own home and getting their quotes from the televised press conferences afterwards. It's not as if a player on the Yankees is going to break an important story to the Braves beat reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. All they'd really be doing is adding to the media scrum around the players before and after each game, adding absolutely nothing of value. On top of that, the count of papers also leaves out the national media reporters -- such as those from ESPN and Sports Illustrated -- as well as the the reporters employed by MLB.com. I'd argue that the fact that about half of the papers decided not to send their own beat reporters is a sign of (finally) smarter newspaper management in not wasting money on a boondoggle for a baseball reporter.